Brobdingnagian arms firm BAE Systems plc's recent run of luck may be coming to an end, as a flurry of bad-news revelations have emerged in recent days. The UK-headquartered multinational may soon be the focus of criminal charges in Tanzania; is the subject of a new American lawsuit; and US investigators continue to pursue the …

COMMENTS

FTW!!!

We can only hope that the beast of BAe will finally get the slap it deserves. You can con all of the people some of the time (the UK public), you can con some of the people all of the time (MOD Procurement) but you can't take the piss for as long as they have and hope to get away with it.

.... and I predict no result!

Get a fraud case to a successful conclusion in an African state - ANY African state - not likely! Even if it came close to looking like a case could happen, I'm sure the right palms will be (allegedly) greased, or the right politicians will pass a law stopping all corruption/fraud investigations prior to a certain date (AKA Kenyan justice). And the Americans are only looking into it because their nose has been put out of joint by a non-US company picking up US arms business, just like they did when we sold them mortars, naval training jets, tank guns, howitzers, etc, etc. I predict the right Senators will receive campaign contributions and the whole matter will fizzle out.

Pilot training?!

Re "Pilot" training

In his comment "Pilot training?!" on 24th September 2007, Richard Laval writes: "Remind me again, where did the majority of the 9/11 terrorists come from?".

Shiv Malik, in an article entitled "My brother the bomber" (about the mastermind of the 7/7 bombings in London, Mohammad Sidique Khan, based partly on extended interviews with Khan's elder brother Gultasab) [Prospect magazine, issue 135, June 2007, pp 30-41] writes: "It is estimated that over the last two decades, Saudi Arabia has set aside $2-3bn a year to promote Wahhabism in other countries. It is not known how much of that money has come to Wahhabi groups in Britain, but one major recipient has been the Leeds Grand Mosque [with which Khan had close connections]."

Wahhabism is an intolerant and hard-line form of Sunni Islam (which originated in Saudi Arabia) and, although not identical with the jihadist or "Islamist" philosophies which have inspired the recent suicide bombings aimed at "the West", is very close to these world views and has acted as a springboard in the political development of most Islamist extremists.

If Saudi Arabia is a "friend of the West", one can only say that, with friends like those, who needs enemies?